Poker Night
by EmilyTheSilentAssassin
Summary: Poker, rain, and a whole lot of Texas lovin! NS
1. It's Raining Men

A/N: to set the premise of this story, let me fill you in. Nick and Sara are hanging out at Nick's townhouse when a HUGE thunder/lighting/rain storm traps him inside...I think you can pretty much guess that romanticness entails. But! How do they pass the time? What happens afterwards? Read on to find out.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, unfortunately. I realize that the likelihood of this ever happening is roundabout zilch, but whatevs. Lets have some fun while we're here.  
  
Chapter One: It's raining men  
  
"Hey Sara, don't forget. My place, tonight. Beer and pizza and poker." Nick Stokes pointed a manila folder at Sara Sidle.  
"I haven't forgotten, hard as I've tried." Sara grinned. "I'll be there at seven thirty."  
"Cool." Nick grinned back.  
  
Sara stood at Nick's door, soaked. If she drove back to her apartment to get changed, she'd be forty-five minutes late. So Sara bravely knocked on the door. Nick opened it.  
"You look like a drowned rat." He stated promptly.  
"How kind of you to notice." Sara pursed her lips. "Now can I come in, or should I just chill out here while I get soaked even more."  
"I'm sorry." Nick drawled. "Come on in. Zack and Bruce aren't here yet. Do you wanna put your clothes in the dryer?"  
"Shirt's line-dry only." Sara fingered the fabric listlessly. "The jeans can go in though."  
"Well, why don't you borrow one of my shirts, and then we'll dry your jeans and you can grab your shirt when you leave." Nick suggested.  
"That works." Sara shrugged. The rain was starting to get heavier. "Shirts are in this drawer." Nick opened it. "Pick any one."  
Sara grabbed one that said 'Texas A&M.' "This one." She decided.  
"It looks good on you." He hung her shirt over the shower door and handed her a robe. "I'll put your jeans in the dryer."  
Sara nodded and wrapped the robe securely around herself. She smiled as the fabric touched her skin. The robe smelled like Nick. Being around Nick gave Sara a supreme feeling of warmth and comfort. So she savored the feeling of his clothing against her skin.  
  
Nick bit back a small gasp when Sara exited his room clad in his robe. Her wet hair had been brushed out, so it hung straight at mid-neck. "Thanks." She smiled gratefully, tying the sash of the robe more tightly.  
"Yeah, no problem." Nick cleared his throat, trying to diffuse the tension of the situation. Fortunately, he was saved by the ringing of the phone. "Hello?" He answered, his voice carrying a slight note of relief.  
"Hey man, it's Bruce. Melinda won't let Zack out of the house and I can't drive in this rain. Car's definitely not made for it."  
Nick chuckled as he thought of Bruce's 20-year-old van trying to get through such bad rain. "That's cool man. I'll see you guys later."  
Sara raised an eyebrow. "So, what's up? Are Zack and Bruce coming?"  
"Zack's wife won't let him out of the house. She's eight and a half months pregnant. She'd kill Zack if he weren't there to take her to the hospital. And Bruce has this old crappy car that can barely get down the road in the best of conditions, so he doesn't want to be driving right now."  
"That's cool." Sara was a little nervous, in truth, about being alone with Nick. "So, where's that pizza? I'm starving."  
"Somebody's impatient." Nick reached into the oven and pulled out a pizza box that had been warming.  
"Very. I haven't had anything to eat in six hours." Sara griped.  
"Well, it's nice to see a woman with a healthy appetite." Nick joked as Sara loaded two slices of pizza onto her plate. She blushed lightly.  
"I'm just hungry is all." She leaned against his counter and took a gigantic bite out of the pizza. A long strand of cheese refused to separate from the pizza. Her tongue swirled around the cheese, trying to break it off. Nick bit his lip, not being able to bear looking at Sara's tongue any more.  
"So Nick, since we have a poker table, the poker chips, and the cards, we might as well play poker." Sara nodded to the portable poker table Nick had set up in the middle of his living room.  
"Sure." Nick shrugged. They sat down at opposite ends of the poker table. "So tell me, what kind of poker do you prefer?"  
"Five-card stud." Sara bit her pizza again. "Oh, I almost forgot. Why don't you bring the drinks over?"  
"Sure thing." Nick got up, and Sara couldn't help staring at his chest as his muscles flex.  
'Damn he's buff.' Sara noticed, wanting to grab him and do him right where he was.  
'Get yourself under control man.' Nick mentally shook his head. He'd been practically staring at Sara all night. He didn't want to be too obvious. 'She's not into you. She only sees you as a friend.' Nick returned with the two beers and dealt the cards.  
"Ready to get whupped?" Sara grinned cheekily.  
"Bring it on, Sidle."  
  
Three beers and several hands of poker later, Sara and Nick were three sheets to the winds. Truth be told, they were more like ten sheets to the wind. Sara bit into her second slice of pizza, squirting some tomato sauce onto her cheek. "You've got tomato sauce on your cheek." Nick's inhibitions about going after Sara had been completely removed by his three beers. Nick leaned over and licked the sauce of her cheek.  
"Nicky." Sara giggled, though it was perfectly obvious that she didn't mind. "Are you hitting on me?"  
"Do you want me to?" Nick challenged her.  
"Yes." She grabbed the back of Nick's neck and pulled him to her.  
"Sara." His voice came out halfway in between a moan and a whisper.  
"Nicky, take me." She whispered.  
That was all he needed to hear. 


	2. Let's Get It On

A/N I still don't own them (sigh) never will, yada, yada, yada. So um, Nick and Sara (woowoo)  
  
Chapter Two: Let's Get It On (This song was sung by Marvin Gaye, just to clarify. And yes, there is supposed to be a slightly dirty connotation to the title, but I'm not going to describe it in great detail. Just the aftermath.)  
  
When Sara woke up, she realized her cheek was resting against Nick's stomach. She had flung one arm around Nick's waist and one of her legs had captured his. Nick was awake, Sara noticed. His hand was softly stroking her hair and he was staring at her with great admiration. "Wow." She rasped out.  
"Yeah." Nick said. "That was amazing."  
"Even if – ow." Sara clutched her head as she tried to sit up. Apparently she had gotten a hangover, nature's punishment for a couple of beers.  
"You've got a hangover too?" Nick winced. "Well, I got an old college standby remedy that's sure to at least keep you sane for the day." They both struggled out of bed. Nick led her into the kitchen. He rooted around in his fridge until he found two cans of tomato juice. He poured a glass for each of them. "Drink up darlin'."  
"Mmm. Tomato juice. My favorite." Sara glared at the glass sarcastically.  
"Well, if we hadn't been otherwise occupied last night we could have tried the other college remedy for preventing the hangover in the first place."  
"What's that?" Sara leaned against Nick's kitchen counter.  
"Right after you've consumed a lot of alcohol, eat a slice or two of bread. Soaks up the alcohol and helps break it down. Make sure to chug a lot of water with that bread because a hangover is basically just dehydration."  
"Is this Frat Boy or Science Nerd talking?" Sara teased.  
"A little bit of both." Nick grinned. "Oh, we should probably put away the poker table from last night."  
"Yeah. Just gimme a sec." Sara closed her eyes again. "Okay." She opened them. "Let's go clean up that poker table." Sara bent over and started to break down the table. Nick slipped his arms around Sara's waist and kissed her neck.  
"Sara, why don't you clear it off first." He indicated to the deck of cards and the poker chips that had been set on the poker table last night.  
"Okay." Sara swept the cards and the chips off of the table and turned to face Nick.  
"Now Sara, that's not what I meant."  
"But it definitely leads up to what you're about to do."  
"Sara, you know me far too well." Nick leaned over and brushed his mouth against hers, causing her to shiver with delight. He took this as a good sign and pushed harder, making Sara groan. Cleaning up the poker table was completely forgotten.  
  
Sara and Nick had only taken one car to work that day, since both of them assumed Sara would just be going back to Nick's house after shift.  
"So what do you want to tell people?" Nick asked.  
"Maybe, nothing?" Sara replied. "I just don't want them to start treating us like those couples who are incomplete without each other, you know? I want to be Nick Stokes and Sara Sidle, not Nickandsara or Saraandnick."  
"That makes sense." Nick nodded. "That's fair enough. No Nickandsara for us yet."  
"Ever." Sara faced the front windshield.  
  
"Is your head still hurting?" Nick leaned over to whisper in Sara's ear as she stared at the carpet fibers.  
As much as Nick's presence made Sara want to do extremely unprofessional things, she was engrossed in the task at hand, namely solving a crime. "Nick, help me. I can't tell if these are from the same carpet." Nick's specialty was hair and fiber analysis, so he was the perfect person to get asked this question. Sara moved aside to let him have a crack at the scope.  
"S'match." Nick nodded. "Where'd you get this?"  
Sara grinned triumphantly. "It was on the guy's shirt. Says he took a nap under the blanket that was used to wrap the vic. Wife says that that blanket's been wrapped in plastic in their basement storage area. Nobody uses it because it is – and I quote – 'so old and moth-eaten.' I guess this means we got our guy."  
"We still gotta place him at the crime scene. This just gives us the how." Nick reminded her. Then he glanced at the clock. "But can we do it in twelve hours? Right now it's the end of shift and I want to take you out for some breakfast and then we'll play some poker." He wiggled his eyebrows and Sara knew that there would really be no poker played.  
She sighed. "Alright Nicky, I get the point. Just let me log what I found and then we'll get going."  
Nick leaned over again so that his breath tickled her neck. "Does it for me."  
  
Sara grinned into the darkness, not caring that she looked like a complete dork. Nick brushed a finger across her stomach. "Somehow it is more memorable when the both of us aren't half drunk out of our minds." Nick said, almost reading her mind.  
Sara laughed. "It's scary how you do that."  
"Do what?"  
"Read my mind."  
"It's such a beautiful mind too." Nick teased.  
"Shut up." Sara blushed.  
"So, I have a question for you."  
Sara froze. "What's the question?" She asked slowly.  
"I'm going to Dallas for a week to spend some time with my sister Amy and her daughter Lexi. I was thinking, I know it's only been two days, but –" Nick blushed. "I haven't stopped talking about you since I met you, so Amy keeps bugging me about why I haven't asked you out yet."  
Sara propped herself up on her elbows. "You really haven't stopped talking about me since you met me." She smiled shyly at Nick.  
"Since the very first time we laid eyes on each other. I still remember the first thing I said about you. I said 'there's this really cool new girl at work. She's cute.' And then Amy asked if I was gonna ask you out. And I told her that Gris had a claim to you." He turned to look at Sara.  
"Proof's in the pudding." She retorted. "Who's got me now?"  
"I've really got you?" Nick smiled, his eyes sparkling.  
"You've got me." Sara confirmed. "But don't you dare get complacent and start ignoring me or I'll kill you. And I know how to cover it up. They'd never get me."  
"Aw, you wouldn't kill me. I'm just too much fun." Nick quipped. "So, what do you say? You wanna come to Dallas and meet Amy and Lexi?"  
Sara was quiet for a moment. Finally she replied. "I would like that very much." 


End file.
